The Historical Journal, page  of  © Cambridge University Press 

doi:./SX

DEFYING MERCANTILISM: ILLICIT

TRADE, TRUST, AND THE JAMAICAN
SEPHARDIM, –*
NUALA ZAHEDIEH
University of Edinburgh

ABSTRACT. Recent historians have highlighted the importance of the web of illicit commercial
transactions which connected competing imperial networks to create an integrated Atlantic
economy but have paid little attention to how co-operation worked across borders. Of necessity, parti-
cipants acted without the legal institutions which are often afforded a central role in narratives of
modernization. In the case of Jamaica, a hub of illicit trade, most merchants found it difficult to
survive in this high-risk environment but members of the Sephardic diaspora, a traditional, commu-
nitarian group, had competitive advantages which they exploited with vigour. They did not rely on
innate attributes of kinship, ethnicity, or religion. They closed entry and built on a favourable histor-
ical and geographical legacy to cultivate attributes which maintained high levels of social discipline
with credible rewards and punishments which were reinforced by their outsider status. Their competi-
tive advantages did stimulate retaliation but also allowed the Sephardim to combine with the
Christian elite to capture rent-seeking opportunities. Far from falling away as modernization
gained pace, the Sephardic diaspora survived and flourished by constructing the strong private-
order institutions needed in large swathes of the economy where neither impersonal corporations,
nor state enforcement mechanisms, were able to manage risk.

The rise of Atlantic history since the s, and the more recent global turn,
have encouraged a reconfiguration of the borders within early modern histori-
ography. The mercantilist framework inherited from the nineteenth century
with its focus on individual nation-states, and self-contained imperial systems,
has given way to a new emphasis on co-operation and complementarity across
dividing lines. A high proportion of this activity was illegal, and cannot be

School of History Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, EH AG n.zahedieh@ed.ac.uk
* Earlier versions of the article were given at seminars at the Huntington Library, CA, the
Institute of Historical Research, London, the University of Edinburgh, and the British Group
of Early American Historians. The author is grateful for helpful discussion on each occasion.
The author is also grateful to Christian Koot and the anonymous referees for their constructive
comments.

Jack P. Greene and Philip Morgan, eds., Atlantic history: a critical appraisal (New York, NY,
); Thomas Bender, ‘Foreword’, in Jorge Canizam-Esquerra and Erik R. Seeman, eds.,
The Atlantic in global history: – (Upper Saddle River, NY, ), p. xvii.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

measured in any systematic way but, nonetheless, it is clear that large volumes of
people and goods moved between empires. In the case of Jamaica, a smugglers’
emporium, estimates suggest that, in the late seventeenth century, the island’s
contraband commerce out-valued trade in its own commodities. Smuggling
was more than a marginal activity, and according to Bernard Bailyn, illegal
flows were integral to the working of the Atlantic system.
Despite heightened awareness of the porousness of national boundaries,
there has been relatively little analysis of how economic co-operation func-
tioned in illicit trade but it is clear that its importance complicates narratives
of ‘modernization’ which find favour with many economists. According to
Douglas North and his followers, the development of long-distance commerce
required an institutional evolution in which traditional, communitarian, and
supposedly inefficient, private-order institutions, gave way to modern, individu-
alistic, and efficient markets characterized by impersonal corporations and
state-backed contracts. Illicit trade does not fit the story. Of necessity, smug-
glers eschewed formal contracts and were reliant on private order institutions
for enforcement which created new opportunities for traditional forms of busi-
ness organization, such as the merchant diaspora, to adapt, survive, and
flourish.
An examination of Jamaica’s contraband commerce highlights the costs and
risks attached to the defiance of mercantilism and the difficulty of securing trust
across imperial boundaries. As English merchants struggled to make a profit,
the king and others were persuaded by the economic arguments for opening
island doors to members of the strategically networked Jewish diaspora, and a
small group of Sephardic merchants, with valuable social capital, played a prom-
inent role in establishing Jamaica’s illicit trade. Yet, as Francesca Trivellato has


‘An estimate of what value is shipt every year from Jamaica to England’,  July , The
National Archives (TNA) CO /, fo. ; TNA Cust /–; Nuala Zahedieh, ‘The mer-
chants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish contraband trade, –’, William and
Mary Quarterly,  (), pp. –.

Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic history: concepts and contours (Cambridge, MA, ), p. ;
P. Andreas, Smuggler nation: how illicit trade made America (New York, NY, ); Wim
Klooster, ‘Inter-imperial smuggling in the Americas, –’, in Bernard Bailyn and
Patricia L. Denault, eds., Soundings in Atlantic history: latent structures and intellectual currents,
– (Cambridge, MA, ), pp. –; Christian J. Koot, Empire at the periphery:
British colonists, Anglo-Dutch trade and the development of the British Atlantic (New York, NY, ).

Douglass C. North and Robert P. Thomas, The rise of the Western world: a new economic history
(Cambridge, ); Douglass C. North, ‘Institutions’, Journal of Economic Perspectives,  (),
pp. –. Although the work of Avner Greif, and others, has stimulated debates about the
role of rules, beliefs, and norms in long-distance trade, most economists consider that they
were outperformed by impersonal, individualistic institutions in a process of ‘modernization’.
For example, in Grief’s work, the modern Genoese institutions outperformed the Maghribis.
For a summary of his arguments developed over two decades, see Avner Greif, Institutions
and the path to the modern economy: lessons from medieval trade (Cambridge, ).

Josiah Child expressed the common view that religious toleration and an open policy
towards aliens and ‘even Jews’ had contributed to Dutch commercial success. Josiah Child, A
new discourse of trade (London, ), p. . Social capital is here understood as ‘features of

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
forcefully demonstrated, the diaspora did not conform to common stereotypes
and was not an ‘idyllic consortia of cooperative kith and kin’ any more than it
was an ‘inefficient relic of a pre-modern world’. Any assessment of the reasons
for the Sephardim’s success should avoid totalizing explanations which con-
ceive of trustworthiness as an inate attribute of kinship, ethnicity, or religion.
Family, countrymen, and co-religionists can often disappoint each other and
any ‘ethnically homogeneous middleman group’ needs to develop a strategy
which is appropriate to its context. In the case of the Jamaican Sephardim,
they built on a favourable geographical and historical legacy and used restric-
tions on entry, high mobility, good information, and credible punishment
power to develop an intense ‘diasporic sociability’ which gave them important
competitive advantages in a high-risk business environment.

I
In , Cromwellian forces launched an ambitious attack on Spanish America.
After a humiliating defeat at Hispaniola, the English troops seized the smaller
and poorer island of Jamaica as a consolation prize. Initial disappointment
soon gave way to a realization that the island would prove a valuable asset as
it was situated ‘within [the Spaniards’] bowels’, straddling the richest trade
routes, and within easy sailing distance of their major ports. Jamaica would
provide an ideal base for a trade which would allow the English to profit
from Spanish America’s wealth without the labour and expense of working
the mines.
From the first Discoveries, the Spanish empire was seen as a source of almost
limitless riches. The fabled wealth of the Peruvian and Mexican silver mines was
seen to falter in the early seventeenth century, but it recovered and, between

social organization such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of society
by facilitating coordinated actions’, Robert D. Putnam, Making democracy work (Princeton, NJ,
), p. .

Francesca Trivellato, ‘Sephardic merchants in the early modern Atlantic and beyond:
toward a comparative historical approach to business’, in Richard Kagan and Philip Morgan,
eds., Atlantic diaporsas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the age of mercantilism, –
(Baltimore, MD, ), pp. –.

Janet Landa drew on field work in south-east Asia to argue that in an environment with a
weak legal infrastructure and positive transaction costs, a ‘rational’ trader will choose trading
partners with shared and easily identifiable kinship and ethnic characteristics. Janet Landa,
‘A theory of the ethnically homogeneous middleman group: an institutional alternative to con-
tract law’, Journal of Legal Studies,  (), pp. –.

Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, ‘La Nación among the nations: Portuguese and other trading
diasporas in the Atlantic, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries’, in Kagan and Morgan, eds.,
Atlantic diasporas, pp. –.

Edward Hickeringill, Jamaica view’d (London, ), p. .

Francis Barrington to Sir John Barrington,  July , Barrington papers, vol. V, British
Library (BL) Egerton MS , fo. ; Nuala Zahedieh, ‘Trade, plunder and economic devel-
opment in early English Jamaica, –’, Economic History Review,  (), pp. –.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

 and , annual average output of Spanish American silver has been
valued at £· million and far exceeded that of any other New World commod-
ity including sugar. A population of six to eight million (compared with
around , in British America), strong regional economies, and large
towns created a buoyant market for enslaved labour, provisions, and manufac-
tured goods which were exchanged for bullion, cochineal, cocoa, dyewoods,
indigo, precious stones, and other valuable commodities.
The Spanish crown took measures to limit access to its American markets and
maximize rents. Colonial commerce was strictly regulated by the Casa de
Contratación in Seville and most commodity trade was confined to two sup-
posedly annual fleets from Cadiz. Although the law excluded foreigners,
they had little difficulty in penetrating the system and, by , they dominated
the trade. However, in the seventeenth century, profits were squeezed as com-
petition intensified; taxes, fees, bribes, and other rents rose; and the fleets
became increasingly irregular so that capital invested in Cadiz was tied up for
years and Spanish America was starved of supplies.
Mounting difficulties in trading with the monopoly fleets encouraged for-
eigners to attempt to expand the rather opportunistic direct smuggling trade
from permanent bases in the Caribbean which could maintain regular com-
merce with the Spanish colonies. The Dutch provided a model for development
at Curacao, a small island off the coast of Venezuala, where they settled in 
and from which the West India Company used the slave trade to open Spanish
ports. The human traffic was the one commerce which was not controlled by
the Casa and was in the hands of independent crown licensees. Not only did


Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Silver, trade and war: Spain and America in the making of
early modern Europe (Baltimore, MD, ), p. ; Noel Deerr, History of sugar ( vols., London,
–), I, p. .

John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The economy of British America, –
(Chapel Hill, NC, ), p. .

Clarence H. Haring, Trade and navigation between Spain and the Indies in the time of the
Habsburgs (Cambridge, MA, ), pp. –; John Stevens, The Spanish rule of trade in the
West Indies (London, ).

Jean O. McLachlan, Trade and peace with Old Spain, –: a study of the influence of
commerce on Anglo-Spanish diplomacy in the first half of the eighteenth century (Cambridge, ),
pp. –; Geoffrey J. Walker, Spanish politics and imperial trade, – (London, ),
p. .

C. H. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, – (Assen, );
P. C. Emmer, ‘“Jesus Christ was good, but trade was better”: an overview of the transit trade of
the Dutch Antilles, –’, in Robert L. Paquette and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Lesser
Antilles in the age of European expansion (Gainsville, FL, ), pp. –; Wim Klooster,
‘Networks of colonial entrepreneurs: the founders of Jewish settlements in Dutch America,
s and s’, in Kagan and Morgan, eds., Atlantic diasporas, pp. –.

The treaty of Tordesillas of  divided the globe between Spain and Portugal with
Africa in Portugal’s sphere and so Spain held back from the Atlantic slave trade. Foreign mer-
chants obtained crown licences, or asientos, to fill the gap and supply African labour to the
Spanish colonies. For a detailed account of the slave asiento, see George Scelle, La traité
négrière aux Indes de Castille ( vols., Paris, ).

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
Spanish colonists pay high prices for enslaved workers but the trade provided
cover for contraband commerce and the perceived value of this chink in the
Spanish imperial wall does much to explain the very high esteem in which
the slave asiento was held. Before the capture of Jamaica, the English were ill-
placed to compete with the Dutch as the wind system meant that their early set-
tlements on the eastern periphery of the Caribbean had poor access to Spanish
markets. However, Jamaica was admirably well suited to serve as an emporium
for Spanish American trade.
The English did not expect the Spaniards to open their doors to free trade
without pressure. After all, the English built their own mercantilist walls
around their much smaller empire with the Navigation Acts introduced in
 and refined after the Restoration: all trade with the colonies was to be
carried in English or colonial ships and valuable (enumerated) commodities
were to be exported only to English or colonial ports. Even after ,
when the treaty of Madrid proclaimed peace between Spain and England in
the Indies, and implicitly accepted English ownership of Jamaica, Spain main-
tained strict prohibitions on commercial exchange or English settlement
within its imperial territories. However, the treaty did expand opportunities
for covert trade through permission for ships of either nation to enter the
other’s harbours with messages from the governors, or to ‘wood and water’
when in distress. Furthermore, in , England’s newly formed African
Company obtained a contract to supply the asientistas with , enslaved
Africans a year from bases in the Caribbean and opened Spanish ports to
English ships involved in this business. The first contract came to little as
English slaving was disrupted by the Second Dutch War, but the business
gained strength after the treaty of Madrid and, in , the asientistas settled
an agent in Jamaica. The island maintained a strong role in the Spanish
slave trade, with its attached smuggling possibilities, down to abolition in
 although there were repeated changes in organization most noticeably
after the British crown was awarded the asiento in . The monopoly con-
tract was bestowed on the South Sea Company which used Jamaica as its


L. A. Harper, The English Navigation Laws: a seventeenth-century experiment in social engineering
(New York, NY, ).

F. G. Davenport, European treaties bearing on the history of the United States and its dependencies,
II (Washington, DC, ), pp. –.

K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London, ); approval of contract made with
Srs Domingo Grillo and Ambrosio Lomelin, minutes of General Court of African Company, 
June , TNA T /, fos. –.

Sir Joseph Williamson to Lord Vaughan,  May , TNA CO //, fo. ; J. F.
Osborne, ‘James Castillo – asiento agent’, Jamaican Historical Review,  (), pp. –;
Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’, p. ; Nuala Zahedieh, ‘Regulation, rent-seeking and
the Glorious Revolution in the British Atlantic economy’, Economic History Review,  (),
pp. –.

Nuala Zahedieh, ‘Monopoly and free trade: changes in the organization of the British
slave trade, –’, Proceedings of the Instituto di Storia Economica,  (), pp. –.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

main base and, with the advantage of factories in Spanish America, expanded
access to imperial ports.
Smugglers who could not colour contraband with any legal business which
gave access to Spanish American ports resorted to the many bays, creeks, and
islands lying outside the official gaze. This ‘coast trade’, as it was known,
became concentrated at fixed points including Monkeys Key in the
Samballoes, a few miles outside Portobello, the Brew which served Cartagena,
and the South Keys of Cuba. With a variety of illicit routes into Spanish
markets, the English maintained high expectations that, although Spain was
unlikely to give them formal access, Jamaica would be able to develop a mutually
profitable collusive trade for, as Carlisle argued, ‘a little connivance in this
matter to ingratiate the people one to another cannot I think amount to any
hurt or damage to either crown’.

II
Despite the high hopes of easy profits, the direct contraband trade proved
tricky: transactions costs were high and profit margins slim. Smugglers
were, of course, subject to all the perils of legal commerce. It was difficult to
match supply and demand, as fashion was fickle, and consumer tastes
changed. Competition was intense with the Dutch, French, and other nations
vying with the English for a share of the trade. Markets were often over-
stocked so that goods had to be unloaded at a loss or returned unsold. In add-
ition to these usual commercial risks, smugglers had to make bargains without
the benefit of resident agents or written documentation. Care was taken to avoid


In , the South Sea Company (SSC) was allowed six staff at each of its factories in
Panama, Portobello, Cartagena, Vera Cruz, and Buenos Aires. Memorandum to Committee
of Correspondence, , BL Add. MS ,, fo. .

‘Notes on illicit trade carried on by sloops from Jamaica with the Spanish’, undated,
National Library of Jamaica (NLJ) MS ; Nathaniel Uring, A history of the voyages and
travels of Capt. Nathaniel Uring (), pp. –. For a detailed description of Monkey
Island, see Thomas Ekines to Hans Sloane, n.d., BL Sloane MS , fo. .

Carlisle to governor of Santiago in Cuba,  Sept. , TNA CO /, fo. . The
English authorities did not disapprove of trade in manufactured goods but refrained from
official sanction which would have caused offence to the Spanish crown. Report about
Jamaica,  May , TNA CO /, fo. .

Jamaican advocates of clandestine trade provided optimistic estimates that costs would be
half those in the Cadiz trade, Peter Beckford to Williamson,  Dec. , W. Noel Sainsbury,
ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies, – (), no.
.

On competitive conditions, see James Houston, Dr Houston’s memoirs of his own life time
(London, ), pp. –; Abraham and Diego Gonzalez to Nathan Simson,  Mar. ,
Isaac v. Defriez (hereafter Simson papers), TNA C /; Tho. Erkines to Sir Hans Sloane,
n.d., BL Sloane MS , fo. ; Sardi’s memorandum to the SSC,  Sept. , BL Add.
MS ,, fo. ; Halls to Brailsford,  Sept. ,  Mar. /, Peers and Tooke
v. Brailsford (hereafter Brailsford papers), TNA C /; naval officer’s shipping returns,
TNA CO /.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
incriminating paper trails at every stage of the trade. Supercargoes might carry
letters for Spanish merchants but they did not carry invoices or bills of lading in
either direction and little was copied into the letter-books which were usually
produced as evidence in court cases. Transactions on the coast rested on
verbal agreements and, on return home, the supercargoes did not provide
written accounts. Smugglers had limited recourse to formal contract enforce-
ment if they were cheated by traders on either side of the border. Furthermore,
if they were betrayed and information was passed to an official, goods were
liable to confiscation, and although the trader might obtain restitution, they
would be made to ‘to pay through the nose for it’. Inside information and
influence were prime assets.
Risks were especially high at sea. As foreign interlopers expanded trade in the
late seventeenth century, the Spanish colonial authorities were authorized to
take retaliatory action against ‘the pirates’ and commission coast-guards who
seized any vessel carrying so-called ‘Spanish’ commodities. Smugglers not
only lost their ship and goods but also their liberty. In , the Jamaican
governor reported that twelve island vessels had been taken in the previous
nine months and that between  and  Englishmen were being held ‘as
slaves’ in the Spanish Indies. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the mutual
hostilities increased in the eighteenth century and, in , Governor Lawes
complained that ‘pyrates have lately taken up of thirty sail of ships and vessels
trading to and from this island’.
Smugglers attempted to improve risk management and reduce transactions
costs at every stage of the trade. They sought current information about con-
sumer preferences and market conditions. They employed reputable captains
and supercargoes to accompany the goods and devised profit-sharing arrange-
ments to reduce opportunism and encourage good performance: it was usual to
fix the price of goods in advance and, if they were sold, the sloop and super-
cargo retained half the profit but, if the goods were unsold, the owner paid
no freight or charges. Vessels were well-armed and heavily manned (at


A report of  claimed that ‘on their return [supercargoes] ordered the persons con-
cerned their proportions without giving them any account of sales’. Journals of the Assembly of
Jamaica (JAJ), II, p. .

Houston, Memoirs, p. .

Harold Bensusan, ‘The Spanish struggle against foreign encroachment in the Caribbean’
(Ph.D. thesis, California, ), pp. –, , . On informers, see Lawes to Lords of
Trade,  Sept. , TNA CO /, pt , no. . Copy of the Spaniards commission trans-
lated, TNA CO /, no. .

Draft of a memorial to be delivered to Don Pedro Ronquillo touching injuries done to the
English in America, Nov. , TNA CO /, no. .

Sir Nicholas Lawes to Lords of Trade,  May , TNA CO /, pt , no. .

Abraham and Diego Gonzalez to Nathan Simson,  Dec. ,  July , Simson
papers, TNA C /, box .

Halls to Aylward,  Nov. , Brailsford papers, TNA C /; Mr Kent and Mr
Thornton to SSC,  June , Committee of Correspondence, BL Add. MS ,, fo. .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

double wages). Many sailed in fleets of four or five and some secured naval
convoy although they paid a hefty fee for protection (in , naval captains
charged · per cent for protection and  per cent on sales as commission).
On the coast, everything was done to promote ‘uneasy trust’. Although
English merchants could not settle permanent agents, they made efforts to
establish regular trading partnerships, monitor reputations, and forge reliable
links with office-holders in the colonial administration. Nathaniel Uring, a
merchant who traded on the coast at the end of the War of Succession,
described how all negotiations were conducted in Spanish, performed face-to-
face, and followed well-established routines and rituals: commodities were
subjected to full and open inspection before witnesses, payment was taken on
delivery, and credit was not given. However, none of these measures could
fully compensate for the difficulties of establishing trust across a linguistic, reli-
gious, and cultural divide. There was huge temptation to betray so-called friends
at every link in the long chain of transactions especially in conditions of long-
standing mutual suspicion and hostility.
Disappointment and failure were commonplace. In , Thomas Lynch,
who, as governor of the island, did all he could to promote a little ‘underhand’
trade with the Spaniards, complained that they were the ‘most ungrateful,
senseless people in the world’ after the seizure and destruction of his own
cargo in Cartagena. The Hall brothers who moved to Jamaica in the s,
with high hopes of undercutting the Cadiz trade, reported a series of disap-
pointing ventures with low prices, unsold goods, and losses to guarda-costas.
They largely withdrew from trade ‘on the coast’ and instead sold their linens
to Jewish merchants who took the risk of the re-export trade. In ,
Governor Beeston complained that ‘our trade with the Spaniard is much


‘The present state of the government of Jamaica’,  Aug. , TNA CO /, fo. ;
‘Memorandum given in by the naval officer’,  Mar. , TNA CO /, fo. ; Lynch to
Jenkins,  Nov. , National Maritime Museum; ‘An account of the ships and vessels that
were lost or received damage in the late hurricane, ’, TNA CO /, fo. b;
Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’, p. .

Lawes to Lords of Trade,  June , TNA CO /, pt , no. ; JAJ, II, pp. ,
–.

The term is used by Lauren Benton, Law and colonial cultures: legal regimes in world history,
– (Cambridge, ), p. .

El Gov. de Yucatan contra Alonso Matheos sobre et tratos commercios con el enemigo
Ingles, Archivo General de Indias, Seville (AGI) Mexico, , R. , no. ; Virrey de Nova
Espana a V Magd,  Feb. , AGI Mexico, , no. .

Uring, History, pp. –.

Lynch to Arlington,  Mar. , TNA CO /, fo. –b; Molesworth to Williamson,
 Sept. , TNA CO /, fo. b.

Halls to Brailsford,  Mar. /,  Mar. /, Brailsford papers, TNA C /.

By his death in , William Hall had refocused his business away from contraband com-
merce with only £ tied up in two small ventures on the coast and £, in island trade,
inventory of William Hall, Oct. , National Archives of Jamaica, Spanish Town (NAJ),
Inv. B/II/, vol. , fos. –.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
abated by their dishonest and unjust dealing’ and, in the s, James Houston,
a Scottish merchant who spent many years in the Indies, complained loudly
about the costs and uncertainties of ‘private trade’.
Given the difficulties of trading across linguistic and cultural borders without
formal mechanisms for contract enforcement, it is surprising that Jamaica’s col-
lusive commerce did reach sizeable proportions. Although he did not record
trade with Spanish America, the naval officer reported that, in , forty of
the eighty-nine ships entering Port Royal from North America or England
went on to trade with the Spaniards. The continued disparity between entries
and clearances in the s suggests that this ratio was maintained and the
largest ships from Europe, such as the Blue Dove, carried cargoes valued at
above £,. In addition, the island’s own sloops had ‘little designs with the
Spaniards’ which, in , were valued at around £, a year. Evidence
from the Royal African Company’s records shows that over a third of the
Africans delivered to the island in the s were resold to Spanish buyers
and this trade provided cover for further trade in dry goods and provisions.
A government report claimed that, in , Jamaica exported English goods
and slaves to the value of £, to Spanish America. In , Jamaica’s
bullion exports to England, earned largely in illicit trade, were reputed to be
worth above £,, and rose to £, a year in , and £,
in –, alongside large quantities of Spanish cocoa, indigo, hides, and
cochineal. Although contemporaries claimed that the island’s trade suffered
from the South Sea Company’s monopoly, it is clear that contraband commerce
continued at high levels although much went through different channels. It was
with some justice that Jamaica was commonly portrayed as England’s ‘silver
mine’.

III
Contemporary commentators, such as Governor Lynch, attributed much of
Jamaica’s hard-earned success in the difficult contraband trades to the activities
of a small group of Jews who began to move to the island with ‘good stocks and
correspondents’ soon after first settlement. These migrants were drawn from


Beeston to Lords of Trade, , TNA CO /; Houston, Memoirs, pp. –.

Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’, pp. –; ‘Memorandum given in by the naval
officer’,  Mar. , TNA CO /, fo. .

Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’, pp. –.

According to a report of , in /, Jamaica re-exported slaves to the value of
£,; woollens at £,, hats, linens at £,, and sundries at £,, Cambridge
University Library, C(h) H Pa. /.

Inchiquin to Lords of Trade,  Aug. , TNA CO /, fo. ; ‘An estimate of what
value is shipt every year from Jamaica to England’,  July , TNA CO /, fo. ;
Handasyd to Lords of Trade,  Nov. , TNA CO /, no. .

Introduction, Francis Hanson, ed., The laws of Jamaica (London, ).

Lynch to Arlington,  Dec. , TNA CO /, fo. .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

a highly mobile Sephardic population descended from Iberian Jews who had
been forcibly converted in the late fifteenth century, and had sustained
further outflows from the peninsula either to escape religious persecution, or
in search of economic betterment, or a combination of both. They developed
a compact, decentralized, but well-connected commercial network with popula-
tions concentrated at points of strategic significance in Iberian American trade
and a ‘mother community’ in Amsterdam where Jews were made relatively
welcome and where, from the early seventeenth century, they were allowed to
practise their religion in the open. After more than a century of making
their faith invisible in the peninsula, many chose to recover ancient practices
and rebuild a public Judaism with customs and rituals which promoted commu-
nity cohesion but set them firmly apart from the majority population. As
Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert has skilfully shown, this self-styled ‘nation’ combined
commercial dynamism and a composite religious culture born of ‘conversion,
exile, survival, and recovery’ which, in many cases, supported fluid identities
across territorial boundaries.
The Sephardim played a major role in developing contraband trade in Dutch
Brazil and Curacao and, after their eviction from Recife, and their readmission
to England in , the Jews were quick to take advantage of parallel opportun-
ities in the English Atlantic world. The Navigation Acts aimed to exclude for-
eigners from England’s plantation commerce but, as seen in Menasseh Ben
Israel’s petition to Cromwell in , soon after the capture of Jamaica, the
Jews and their supporters could argue that they possessed valuable financial
and social capital which had contributed to Dutch commercial prosperity
and would have equal benefits for the English. Both Cromwell and the


New Christianization meant profoundly different things in different families. Some main-
tained their Jewish culture in the secrecy of their homes. Others embraced Catholicism. The
divide between Old and New Christians was porous with much inter-marriage. Daviken
Studnicki-Gizbert, A nation upon the ocean sea: Portugal’s Atlantic diaspora and the crisis of the
Spanish empire, – (Oxford, ).

On the importance of decentralized, self-organized networks in Atlantic commerce, see
David Hancock, Oceans of wine: Madeira and the emergence of American trade and taste (New
Haven, CT, ).

Studnicki-Gizbert, ‘La Nación among the nations’, pp. –. Discussion of Antonio
Rodrigues Robles, a resident of mid-seventeenth-century London, highlights fluid identities.
Jacob Selwood, Diversity and difference in early modern London (Farnham, ), pp. –.

Cecil Roth, A history of the Jews in England (rd edn, London, ), pp. –; Stephen
A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews: the struggle for British West India commerce, – (Gainesville,
FL, ); Jonathan Israel, European Jewry in the age of mercantilism, – (Oxford, ).

‘Now in this dispersion…[the Jews] credit one another; and by that means they draw the
Navigation where-ever they are, where with all of them merchandizing and having perfect
knowledge of all the kinds of Moneys, Diamants, Cochinil, Indigo, Wines, Oyle, and other
Commodities, that serve from place to place; especially holding correspondence with their
friends and kinds-folk, whose language they understand; they do abundantly enrich the
Lands and Country’s of Strangers, where they live’, quoted in Paul Mendes-Flohr and
Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the modern world: a documentary history (nd edn, New York, NY,
), p. .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
Restoration government were persuaded, and after , Jews with patronage
at court and the means to pay fees were able to obtain patents of endenization
which gave them rights to trade on the same terms as Englishmen. By ,
there were between , and , Jews scattered around the empire includ-
ing about  in London.
In , a ‘French’ Jew, Jacob Joshua Bueno Henriques, who had spent two
years in Jamaica after its capture by the English, promoted his case for endeni-
zation with a well-tried strategy: a claim to knowledge of mineral deposits in the
island. Nothing seems to have come of this scheme but, in the following year, a
similar ploy was used by two Amsterdam Jews with the backing of Sir William
Davidson, the king’s envoy in the Low Countries who had an interest in promot-
ing the Spanish slave trade. The bait worked. Prospecting rights were granted
with patents of endenization and, in , six Jews embarked for Jamaica with
a ‘rich cargo’ and a clear indication that they intended to trade in Spanish
markets. The promised gold was not found and two of the Jews soon departed
but others set up shop in Port Royal, including Moses Jesuran Cardosa, who
remained in the island until his death, and played a leading role in establishing
a permanent Jewish presence in the island.
In , a group of Jamaican merchants complained about the ‘prejudices
and inconveniences’ being caused by the ‘infinite number of Jews who daily


Calvin’s case, , laid down the English law of nationality. Those born in England, or in
countries under the king’s dominion, were subjects. All others were aliens and lay under disabil-
ities: they could not own, lease, or inherit real property in England or bring legal action that
related to real property; they had no political rights and could not hold office; they were
subject to customs duties imposed upon aliens and could not qualify as English under the
Navigation Acts. Aliens could apply for naturalization by a private Act of Parliament which
granted virtually all the privileges of a subject but petitioners had to take a sacramental oath
which excluded Jews. A grant of denization from the crown, as an exercise of its prerogative
power, in the form of a Letter Patent, provided Jews with an alternative and removed the inabil-
ity to hold real property, but not always the liability to pay aliens’ customs duties, as rights varied
with the wording of the particular instrument. Daniel Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen: the contro-
versy over immigration and population, – (Newark, DE, ), pp. –.

Between  and , approximately  Jewish aliens were endenizened in British
dominions. Jacob R. Marcus, The colonial American Jew, – ( vols., Detroit, MI,
), p. . There were  Jews listed in London in . Most were Sephardi although
 were certainly Ashkenazi. A. P. Arnold, ‘A list of the Jews and their households in
London’, Miscellanies of the Jewish Historical Society of England, part VI (), pp. –.

Wilfred S. Samuel, ‘Sir William Davidson, royalist (–) and the Jews’, Transactions
of the Jewish Historical Society of England,  (), pp. –. For the same ploy in Dutch terri-
tories, see Klooster, ‘Networks of colonial entrepreneurs’, p. .

Davidson was involved in illegal Dutch trade with Barbados in the s and the begin-
nings of the African Company set up in –. Samuel, ‘Sir William Davidson’.

‘The gold finding Jew went home a month since in Capt. Capps bound for London’,
Lynch to Bennet,  May , TNA CO /, fo. b. Nuala Zahedieh, ‘The capture of
the Blue Dove, : policy, profits, and protection in early English Jamaica’, in Roderick
A. McDonald, ed., West Indies accounts: essays on the history of the British Caribbean and the
Atlantic economy (Kingston, Jamaica, ), pp. –.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

resort to the island’ and brought unwanted competition. They overstated

their case, but the governor did confirm that the island had attracted a
settled community of thirteen ‘free’ Jews, of whom nine can be identified
from court cases (Table ). Combined with the sixteen Jews ‘which act under
them’, women, and children, there was a total population of around sixty.
These early arrivals did not come as a group but were drawn from dispersed
ports scattered around the Sephardic network. Nonetheless, they quickly con-
structed a community which provided a stable base for further Sephardic migra-
tion to the island including a small number from Surinam after it was handed to
the Dutch. In , the census of Port Royal, where the Sephardim were
based, listed twenty-one probable Jewish households (holding seventy-seven
whites and fifty blacks) among the total of . It also listed twenty-two
Jewish names among the , militia men belonging to the town. Further
recruits arrived in the s, including Diego Gonzalez, who left a collection
of letters and business documents arising from a court case, and Aaron
Lamego who, in , was expelled, along with other Jews, from French terri-
tory. Although Jamaica’s overall white population fell back in the s, the
Sephardim seem to have more than maintained their numbers (Table ).
After Port Royal suffered massive destruction in an earthquake in , the
Jews established new congregations in Spanish Town and Kingston. A document
of  claimed that there were eighty Jewish households which suggests a total
population of around , making it the largest in British America, and the
second largest in the entire Caribbean (after Dutch Curacao with around
). In the eighteenth century, Jewish names became increasingly frequent
among surviving probate inventories (Table ) and according to Benjamin
Bravo, a resident in the s, the population numbered – by .
Despite their extravagant claims in the s, the Jews showed little interest
in planting or mining ‘for their design was only to insinuate themselves into the
country for the sake of trade’. This was choice and not necessity. The Jews had


Petition of the merchants of Port Royal to Sir Thomas Lynch concerning the Jews,  June
, TNA CO /, no. .

Lynch to Council of Plantations,  Mar. /, TNA CO /, fo. .

Jacob Selwood, ‘Left behind: subjecthood, nationality, and the status of Jews after the loss
of Surinam’, Journal of British Studies,  (), pp. –.

‘Inhabitants both masters and servants of Port Royal parish’, TNA CO /, fos. –.
Six of those in Table  appear: Abraham Alvarez; Joseph da Costa Alvaringa; Moses Jesuran
Cardosa; Solomon Gabay; Abraham Lucena; Jacob Mendez Gutterez. David Gomez had died
by this time and David Alvarez lived with his father.

‘List of the several regiments of foot and troops of horse in Jamaica’, TNA CO /, fos.
–. Not all Jews can be identified by name. Most had Spanish or Portuguese names but some
were anglicized. In , Abraham Martin, ‘of the Jewish nation’, gave evidence in court and
swore on the  Books of David. TNA CO /, no. .

Memorandum from the Jews about tax, , TNA CO /, fo. .

Benjamin Bravo to William Wood,  Feb. , TNA CO /, fo. .

‘A journal kept by Coll. William Beeston from his first coming to Jamaica’, BL Add. MS
,, fo. .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge

Table  Jewish settlers with patents of endenization in Jamaica in 

ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS

Merchant Arrival Birth Probable residence from  Language
Abraham Alvarez c.  Spain France, England Spanish
David Alvarez c.  Spain France, England Spanish
Joseph da Costa Alveringa  Portugal England, Canaries Portuguese
Moses Jesuran Cardosa c.  France? Amsterdam Portuguese
Solomon Gabay  France Amsterdam, England Portuguese
David Gomez  Portugal Holland, England Portuguese
Abraham Lucena c.  unknown New York Portuguese
Jacob Mendes Gutterez  Portugal Portugal, England Portuguese
Abraham Perara  Amsterdam Flanders, France, Barbados Portuguese

Sources: TNA HCA /; Jacob A. P. H. Andrade, A record of the Jews in Jamaica from the English conquest to the present times (Kingston,
Jamaica, ).


  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

Table  White population of Jamaica

Jews Total whites Total population
 c.  , ,
 c.  , ,
 – , ,

Sources: Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica, ), I, pp. , ;
TNA CO /, fo. ; TNA CO //, fo. ; TNA CO /, fo. .

full property rights and it was usual for them to patent land especially in the
early years when prices were low. All nine of the ‘free’ Jewish settlers who
could be identified in  patented, at least,  acres, and most developed
plantations, but agriculture remained secondary to their commercial activities.
For example, at his death in , Abraham Alvarez owned an indigo plantation
in Vere with ‘seventy-six working negroes and ten pickaninnies’. Nonetheless,
he lived in Port Royal and was described as a merchant on his tombstone.
The Jews plainly calculated that they had an advantage in trade, and perhaps
because of their precarious past, a preference for high liquidity. Analysis of
, probate inventories surviving from between  and  confirms con-
temporary assertions that the Jews were overwhelmingly urban and commer-
cial. At least twenty-four of the thirty-two probable Jews lived in towns (Port
Royal, Kingston, or Spanish Town) and twenty-three of the twenty-eight with
an occupational descriptor were merchants, alongside four planters and one
widow.
The merchant inventories show that over half the Jewish merchants were
interested in illicit Spanish commerce and that they drew heavily on diasporic


In , a list of twelve Jewish plantation owners was submitted to the Lords of Trade to
counter claims that they neglected planting. It included five of the nine Jews in Table  (David
Alvarez, Moses Jesuran Cardosa, Joseph da Costa Alveringa, Jacob Mendez Gutterez, the widow
of Solomon Gabay). TNA CO . In Dec. , a group of so-called ‘planting Jews’ petitioned
for an exemption from the separate tax imposed on their community ‘in the lump’.  Dec.
, JAJ, I, p. .

Inventory of Abraham Alvarez, Oct. , NAJ, Inv. B/II/, vol. , fo. ; tombstone, 
Mar. , R. D. Barnett and P. Wright, The Jews of Jamaica and Jewish tombstone inscriptions, –
 (Jerusalem, ), .

Houston, Memoirs, p. . The series of recopied inventories in the Jamaica Archives is
unfortunately not complete. Volumes , , , and  are missing from the period –.
For a discussion of the inventories, see Meyers who used a different sample. Allan D. Meyers,
‘Ethnic distinctions and wealth among colonial Jamaican merchants, –’, Social
Science History,  (), pp. –.

For the period –, Abraham Alvarez, Moses Gabay Faro, David Gabay, and
Abraham Azavedo are listed as planters, NAJ, Inv. B/II/, vols. , , , and .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 

Table  Jewish decedents in Jamaican probate inventories, –

– – – –
Total no.    
Jews    
% Jews · · · ·

Source: Inventories, National Archives of Jamaica, Spanish Town, Inv. B/II/, vols.
, , , .

connections at every stage of the trade. A court case of  showed how they
used their European networks to secure direct supplies of continental commod-
ities for sale in Spanish markets. By making minimum adherence to the
Navigation Acts, by simply calling at a south coast port, they kept costs down
and could offer advantageous terms. At other times, they landed goods
from Dutch or French ships in bays and creeks outside Port Royal in a well-orga-
nized smuggling business. The Jews were also active in developing the provi-
sion trade with North America from where their co-religionists delivered
flour, beef, kosher beef, and even pork for Spanish markets.
The Jamaican Jews seem to have played little direct role in the risky transat-
lantic leg of the African slave trade but they obtained human cargoes at the


Over half the Jewish merchant inventories suggest an involvement in Spanish trade com-
pared with  per cent of all the Port Royal inventories; Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’,
p. .

‘Memoria of what goods may be fit for Sta Marta, the rest of the Tierre Firma’,  May
, Westminster Abbey Muniments ,. On the importance of foreign goods, see the
South Sea Company’s cargoes, BL Add. MS ,, no. .

On direct trade, see Zahedieh, ‘Capture of the Blue Dove’; Samuel Hayne, An abstract of all
the statutes made concerning aliens trading in England (London, ), pp. , . For Jewish
expertise in smuggling in the Thames, see a report to the SSC, BL Add. MS ,, no. .
On the Jews’ low prices, see Francis Hall to Thomas Brailsford,  Mar. /,  Jan.
/, Brailsford papers, TNA C /. William Wood claimed that, by the s, ‘the
Jews [are] the only persons almost that have any large quantities of all kinds of goods lying
in their houses, warehouses, or shops for…making proper sortments of goods for the
Spaniards’. William Wood to Lords of Trade,  Feb. , TNA CO /, fos.
–. V. L. Brown, ‘The South Sea Company and contraband trade’, American Historical
Review,  (), p. .

On the smuggling activities of Isaac Lamego and Isaac Lopez Nunez in collusion with the
marquis du Quesne (captain of Port Royal) in the s, see JAJ, II, pp. , –, .

Nathan Simson left eighty-eight bills of lading from  until  which show the
importance of the Jamaican entrepot to his New York provision business although it had not
yet outstripped Curacao with  per cent of his cargoes consigned to Curacao,  per cent
to Jamaica,  per cent to London, and the remaining  per cent for lesser Caribbean
ports and Amsterdam. Simson papers, TNA C /. On Jews and the provision trade in
New York, see Noah L. Gelfand, ‘A transatlantic approach to understanding the formation
of a Jewish community in New Netherland and New York’, New York History,  (),
pp. –.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

Royal African Company’s sales. Moses Jesuran Cardosa, an active contraband

trader, was the largest single purchaser at the Company’s sales in the s
and s. He bought  Africans at forty-three sales between  and
 and paid less than half the average price of £ which suggests that he
was concentrating purchases on children and what were described as ‘refuse
slaves’ (the sick and old) who found ready sales on the poorer parts of the
Spanish coast. The Jews played an important role in settling the asiento
agents in Port Royal in the s and they remained prominent in the smug-
gling trade conducted by South Sea Company employees after .
After assembling the goods and persons for sale, the Jews played an active role
in taking them to market. By , the island had a fleet of around eighty small,
stoutly built sloops of which, at any time, around twenty might be engaged in
‘little designs with the Spaniards’. Some Jews such as Jacob Lopez Torres,
listed as a mariner in the  census, and an overseer of the Port Royal syna-
gogue, owned a number of vessels but others hired shipping and Christian mar-
iners. On the other hand, the Jews played a prominent role as supercargoes to
ensure close personal oversight of their own, and their community’s, transac-
tions as well as taking on business for Christians. According to Houston,
three Jews dominated the English coast trade in the s – Aaron Diaz
Fernandez, Daniel Mendes de Costa, and Moses Mendes – and they maintained
a sort of floating warehouse on the coast which others used to make up stocks
for sale. As noted above, the English were formally excluded from settling in
Spanish territories before , and found it intensely difficult to forge reliable
business relationships across the religious and linguistic divide, whereas the Jews
had complete fluency in Iberian languages, and an appearance which allowed
them to pass unnoticed in Spanish territory. Although Jewish merchants did not
name their ‘friends’ in Spanish territories, it is clear from their regular exports
of kosher beef that they had firm links to co-religionists. Despite prohibitions,
and the Inquisition, the Jews had communities in all the major towns and
had forged a web of clandestine activity with well-established distribution


Trevor Burnard, ‘Who bought slaves in early America? Purchasers of slaves from the Royal
African Company in Jamaica, –’, Slavery and Abolition,  (), p. .

Richard Brown v. Andrew Lopez and Co., TNA HCA /. The SSC examined Mr Dennis’s
conduct as chief of the Panama and Portobello factory where he was accused of illegal trading
in negroes with Benjamin Bravo, Committee of Correspondence, SSC,  Oct. , BL Add. MS
,, fos. –; Bravo purchased  slaves from the Royal African Company in , TNA T
/, fos. –, –, –. Also see Tyndall and Assheton to Isaac Hobhouse,  June ,
 Apr. ,  July , Bristol Central Library, Jeffries Collection, vol. XIII, fos. , –,
.

‘Memorandum given in by the naval officer’,  Mar. , TNA CO /, fo. .

‘List of the regiments’, TNA CO /, fos. –; naval officers returns,  Apr. –
Apr. , TNA CO /; petition of Jacob Rodriguez, Deleon, and Jacob Lopes Torres,
overseers of the synagogue, Journal of Assembly of Jamaica,  Mar. , TNA CO /,
fo. .

Moses Cardosa acted for the Halls in the s. Brailsford papers, TNA C /.

Houston, Memoirs, p. .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
channels and long experience with dealing with, and even serving, the regula-
tory regime. They knew who to trust, who to bribe, and how to turn the system
to their advantage.
Finally, the importance of the Jews in Jamaica’s contraband trade was
reflected in their role in the export of Spanish goods, above all bullion.
Over half the Jewish inventories surviving from the period between  and
 contained large quantities of bullion with  per cent listing above
£ in cash and some owning much larger sums such as Jacob Baruch
Alvarez, who died in  with around £, worth of silver and gold.
The lists of debts in the inventories, including bonds and mortgages, show
that the Jews played a banking function in the island and during the war of
the s, Mennaseh and Benjamin Peraira had a contract to furnish the
island’s governor with an annual supply of bullion valued at £,. In
, a ship’s captain listed ninety bullion consignments for London of
which fifteen were consigned to eight Jews. Not all were valued, but they
included fifteen barrels of silver worth almost £, for Abraham de Paiva
who was a leading player in London’s bullion market. Another prominent
Jew, Jacob Mears, who settled in Jamaica in , was involved with Dummer
in the packet boat service used to transport large quantities of Spanish silver
to England in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Jews were also conspicuous in the dye-stuffs trade. They provided capital to
expand logwood cutting and to finance export of the product. Island
records suggest that, in the early s, Jamaica exported around  tons of
Spanish logwood a year but only a small proportion was retained in England.
In , London imported around  tons with  per cent assigned to one
Jewish merchant, Antony Gomezsera (for whom Cardosa was factor). Much


Diego and Abraham Gonzalez to Nathan Simson,  July , Simson papers, TNA C
/, pt ; Marcus, Colonial American Jew, pp. –; Brown, ‘South Sea Company’,
p. ; El Gov. de Yucatan contra Alonso Matheos sobre el tratos commercios con el
enemigo Ingles, AGI Mexico , R. , no. ; Selwood, Diversity and difference, p. .

Edward Long, A history of Jamaica ( vols., ), II, p. .

Inventory of Jacob Baruch Alvarez,  June , NAJ, Inv. B/II/, vol. , fos. –.

Copy of a letter of credit,  Jan. /, TNA CO /, fo. .

‘Book belonging to Thomas Stubbs’, TNA HCA /; Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and
coral: Anglo-Dutch Jews and eighteenth-century trade (Leicester, ).

Dummer’s contract with the Post Office in  allowed him to carry cargoes which
allowed him to move into Spanish American trade via Jamaica in partnership with his
brother and the Mears brothers, Jacob and Sampson. Jacob Mears had spent sixteen years
trading in Jamaica and claimed knowledge of the trade and contacts with co-religionists in
Spanish America. Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, –: an exploration of communication
and community (Oxford, ), pp. –.

For example, David Gomez owned the Betty ketch included in a list of ships trading for
logwood, TNA CO /, fo. .

‘Memo given in by the naval officer’,  Mar. , TNA CO /, fo. ; Maurice Woolf,
‘Foreign trade of London Jews in the seventeenth century’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical
Society of England,  (), pp. –.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

of the remainder was shipped to Europe, with minimal adherence to the

Navigation Acts. In , the Providence was seized at Cowes with a cargo of
 tons of logwood intended for sale in Amsterdam on account of eight
Jamaican Jews. The Jews played a similar role in the indigo trade: in ,
six Jews accounted for over half of London’s indigo imports from Jamaica
and, in the s, drawback on duties on re-exported indigo at Port Royal
shows that six Jews accounted for over a third of the trade.
Just as it is impossible to estimate the value of Jamaica’s illegal trade with
Spanish America, it is even more difficult to assess the proportion in the
hands of Jewish merchants, although contemporary commentators had no
doubt that they used their diasporic connections to secure a disproportionate
share and it was often claimed that they dominated the trade.
Despite their heavy focus on the riskiest trading sector, the Jews prospered.
Probate evidence shows that Jews accounted for almost  per cent of estates
valued at above £, in the period – and the mean value of the
Jewish estates identified for the period – was £,. In a separate
survey, Meyers compared the wealth of thirty-two Jewish merchants he iden-
tified from the period – with that of eighty-nine non-Jewish mer-
chants and found that the former were significantly richer. The median
wealth of the Jewish estates was £, and  per cent were valued above
£,, while the median wealth of the non-Jewish estates was £ and 
per cent were valued above £,. Jewish merchants possessed about three
times as much wealth as the Anglo merchants, and their wealth was more
evenly distributed. Meyers noted that ‘Anglo anxieties about the collective
wealth of the Sephardim, while probably exaggerated, would appear to be
substantiated.’

IV
The commercial success of the Jews in Jamaica, above all in high-risk contra-
band trade, had multiple causes and requires careful explanation. Although
envious rivals denounced the Jews for operating as ‘a kind of joint stock
company’ and trading as a ‘perfect monopoly’, the Sephardim, in fact,
eschewed company organization. Like the private traders whose locally
informed initiatives are seen to have driven East India Company expansion
after , the Jews maintained high levels of individual autonomy and


Perara and Gomezsera v. Calloway, Sept. , TNA HCA /.

London Port Books, ; West Yorkshire Record Office, Sheepscar Branch, Leeds; JAJ,
vol. II, pp. , , , .

John Taylor, ‘Taylor’s history of his life and travels in Jamaica’, , NLJ MS , fo. ;
Houston, Memoirs, p. .

Meyers, ‘Ethnic distinctions and wealth’, p. .

Petition of the merchants of Port Royal to Sir Thomas Lynch concerning the Jews,  June
, TNA CO /, no. .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
flexible, fluid organization within a decentralized network with thick horizontal
links. Within the diaspora, they drew on strong social capital, which had
been accumulated over generations of dispersal, to create local cohesion and
high levels of co-operation and collaboration with other groups over a wide
geographic area.
The broad geographic reach and decentralized structure of the Sephardic
diaspora is seen in the backgrounds of the group of ‘free’ Jews who settled in
Jamaica by . Nine of the thirteen can be identified from court cases and
other sources (Table ) and although all but the Spanish Alvarez family
(father and son) identified themselves as ‘of Portuguese extraction’, their
birth-places were dispersed: three were born in Portugal, three in France, two
in Spain, and one in Amsterdam. All had led peripatetic lives. Most had
moved between, at least, three countries (including Jamaica) in the previous
ten years. Between them, they had gained first-hand experience of, at least,
eleven countries including Barbados, Brazil, the Canaries, the Dutch
Republic, France, Italy, New York, Portugal, and Spain. At least two-thirds of
them had lived for some time in the Iberian peninsula where they would
have had to assume a Christian identity. All had passed through London,
though often for a very short time, and obtained patents of endenization with
a clause which allowed them to trade on the same foot as Englishmen. All
had agents in both London and in Amsterdam (where at least four had close
kin).
While benefiting from broad networks, Jamaica’s early Jewish settlers
required skill to mould a group of relative strangers into a cohesive community.
Only four of the nine had a close kin connection: Abraham and David Alvarez
were father and son; the partners Solomon Gabay and David Gomez married
two Perara sisters and were brothers-in-law. Although all had friends in
common, none had first-hand acquaintance with every other member of the
group before migration to Jamaica. However, in adjusting to a new environment
they clung together, and as Studnicki-Gizbert has argued, they were able to draw
on collective memory of dispersion and well-established strategies for strength-
ening ties between members of mobile communities. Until the earthquake of
, almost all Jamaica’s Jews settled in Port Royal. The twenty or so families
lived, worked, and socialized in close proximity, and according to testimony pro-
vided by a young merchant, Abraham Perara Delgado, the Jews met ‘in
company’ on a daily basis. In , the leaders, including Moses Cardosa,


Emily Erikson, Between monopoly and free trade: the East India Company, –
(Princeton, NJ, ).

Perara and Gomezsera v. Calloway, Sept. , TNA HCA /.

Studnicki-Gizbert, ‘La Nación among the nations’, pp. –.

 tombstone inscriptions in the Port Royal burial ground are from between  and
. The majority ( per cent) are in Portuguese and almost all the remainder in Spanish
with one in English. Barnett and Wright, Tombstone inscriptions. Deposition of Abraham
Perara Delgado, , TNA HCA /.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

purchased a plot in the middle of Port Royal on which they built a synagogue.
The building provided a symbol of collective affiliation, and difference, a public
declaration of permanence, and an important social centre for the community,
used for daily assembly and information exchange, as well as worship. Two
new congregations were formed in Spanish Town and Kingston after the earth-
quake, but all three were in a radius of twenty miles, and were in close commu-
nication sustained by overlapping membership and common interests,
reinforced by a policy of strict endogamy which not only restricted access to
the group but also necessitated high levels of intermarriage and the formation
of dense kin networks. The thick web of personal relationships ensured rapid
diffusion of information about personal and business affairs which facilitated
oversight and enforcement of norms.
In forging solidarity and social discipline, the Sephardim deployed strategies
common to the associational culture which flourished throughout early
modern Europe as the growing bourgeoisie struggled to adjust to rapid eco-
nomic and social change. Although Port Royal was notorious for its riotous
and unruly lifestyle; the factionalism of economic, social, and political life;
and low levels of business probity, the Sephardim stood apart. The Jews success-
fully promoted the type of conduct which is commonly associated with the
Protestant work ethic: abstemiousness; thrift; and self-restraint. However,
the Sephardim reinforced their common-place sociability with rigorous adher-
ence to a range of customs and rituals which had survived and been adapted
from before the forced conversions and which set them apart. As seen in tomb-
stone inscriptions, they maintained their Iberian languages among themselves
until the late eighteenth century. They buried their dead in a well-main-
tained separate cemetery from the s and worshipped in a public synagogue


The construction of a synagogue is not required for religious services, or practising a
proper Jewish life. The necessity for worship is to have a Mingan (ten Jewish males) while
the space can be anywhere. John Peeke sold a plot measuring  feet by  feet to the
Jewish community represented by Abraham David Gabay, Moses Jesuran Cordosa, Asperius,
and a further Gabay. Deed,  Jan. , Island Record Office, Spanish Town, Jamaica,
Deeds OS, vol. VIII, p. .

The importance of the synagogue is reflected in wills: it was the custom to leave bequests
to the synagogue. Jacob A. P. M. Andrade, A record of the Jews in Jamaica from the English conquest to
the present times (Kingston, Jamaica, ).

R. Cooter and Janet Landa, ‘Personal versus impersonal trade: the size of trading firms
and contract law’, International Review of Law and Economics,  (), pp. –.

Jonathan Barry, ‘Bourgeois collectivism? Urban association and the middling sort’, in
Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks, eds., The middling sort of people: culture, society and politics
in England, – (London, ), pp. –.

‘By their parsimonious living which I do not charge as a fault in them they have the
means of underselling the English’, Beeston to Lords of Trade, TNA CO /, fo. .
Similar quotes abound.

James Knight, Natural, moral, and political history of Jamaica (), fo. b.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
from . They observed their own calendar with its Saturday Sabbath and
religious holidays on which they refused to take part in militia training. They
followed a kosher diet. Their young people attended the Yeshibah (a school
for religious instruction) which inculcated a strong awareness of their Jewish
heritage, and their ‘difference’, and encouraged members to behave for the
benefit of the community. At the level of the individual, such practices
were costly. They required time and self-discipline and made it difficult to social-
ize with Christians but, on the other hand, the signalling traits not only strength-
ened group cohesiveness but also lowered the costs of identifying insiders.
In common with other purposeful associations, and friendly societies, of the
late seventeenth century, the Sephardim cemented group commitment with
mutuality. Membership of the small, tight-knit Jamaican Jewish community
delivered a range of economic and social benefits which offered household
security over the life-cycle. Schooling and business training were provided
within the community. A good marriage brought a handsome dowry. Interest-
free loans were available and were especially helpful for those early in their
careers. The articles of agreement made between David Lopez Narbona and
Solomon Gabay in  show that the former obtained start-up funding on
easy terms as well as assistance with his family’s transport costs and initial subsist-
ence. Although merchants maintained high levels of personal mobility, and
flexibility, by avoiding large, long-standing partnerships, they came together as
‘a sort of company’ when there were clear benefits in collaboration as when
eight Jews freighted the Providence for a voyage to Amsterdam in .
There was well-organized relief for those who fell on hard times, and in old
age, with a compulsory contribution to the ‘poor fund’ levied on all trade trans-
actions. Wills show that it was usual to make bequests to community institutions
and the ‘poor of the Nation’ and there was generous alms-giving at funerals.
The tools of sociability and mutuality which bound the Jamaican Sephardim
were also used to create and maintain ties and promote information exchange
with communities overseas. Families had a tendency to divide, disperse, and


In , Judith Baruch Alvarez left £ ‘for making a convenient causeway or walk
from the usual place of landing of corpses…to the burial place of the Jewish Nation’. Will of
Judith Baruch Alvarez,  Sept. , Andrade, Record.

Memo from Baron de Belmonte,  Jan. , TNA CO /, fos. –.

Receipts of sale for New York provisions, –, Simson papers, TNA C /, pt .

The Yeshibah is mentioned in wills. Moses Cardosa left it £, will of Moses Cardosa,
 Dec. , Andrade, Record.

J. Carr and Janet Landa, ‘The economics of symbols, clan names and religion’, Journal of
Legal Studies,  (), pp. –; Laurence Iannaccone, ‘Why strict churches are strong’,
American Journal of Sociology,  (), pp. –.

Barry and Brooks, eds., Middling sorts, pp. –; Phil Withington, Society in early modern
England: the vernacular origins of some powerful ideas (Cambridge, ), pp. –, –.

Articles of Agreement between Solomon Gabay and David Lopez Narbona,  July ,
Island Record Office, Spanish Town, Deeds, OS I, vol. , fos. –.

Petition to Thomas Lynch, , TNA CO /, no. ; Zahedieh, ‘Capture of the Blue
Dove’; Perara and Gomezsera v. Calloway,  Sept. , TNA HCA /.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

come back together as business opportunities opened and closed. For example,
Abraham de Lucena moved to Jamaica from New York in the s but, a gen-
eration later, his son returned to New York to take part in the growing provisions
trade with the Caribbean. Joseph da Costa Alvaringa’s son moved to London
in the s where he was involved with the asiento trade via Jamaica and was
joined by his mother after his father’s death. Dispersal was reinforced by
endogamy which often necessitated a move overseas to find a suitable
partner. Esther Marques, daughter of a prominent Jamaican family, married
Luis Gomez, a large-scale provision merchant trading from New York to the
Caribbean, and two of her sons also married Jamaican Jews who they met in
the course of working as supercargoes in the family firm. The strong
family connections between Jamaica and New York Jews are highlighted in
New York testaments surviving from the periods between  and . A
third of the wills indicate a close family link with Jamaica. Connections
could be cultivated and maintained through conversations in written corres-
pondence, as emphasized in David Hancock’s work on the Madeira wine busi-
ness, but the Jews reinforced these ties through frequent face-to-face contact.
It was common for Jewish merchants to travel with their goods and they
benefited from direct contact with customers. Shared religion took these
mobile merchants into the Sephardim’s tightly confined social spaces wherever
they were, and ensured rapid transmission of personal and business information
which, at times, also extended to Ashkenazi Jews, who began to arrive in the
Atlantic in small numbers and attended the Sephardic synagogues.
As with Amsterdam’s ‘global’ Jews examined by Jessica Roitman, Jamaica’s
Sephardim did business with those outside their own community. They
bought and sold goods to Christians; they undertook commission business for


Gelfand, ‘Transatlantic approach’, pp. , ; Andrade, Record.

Inventory of Joseph da Costa Alveringa,  Aug. , NAJ, Inv. B/II/, vol. , fos. –;
Richard Brown v. Andrew Lopez and Co., HCA /; Yogev, Diamonds and coral, p. .

Will of Isaac Rodriquez Marques,  Oct. , in Leo Herschowitz, Wills of early New York
Jews, – (New York, NY, ), pp. –; Howard B. Rock, New York Jews in the New
World, – (New York, NY, ), p. .

Herschowitz, Wills.

Hancock, Oceans of wine. Abraham and Diego Gonzalez’s correspondence with the
New York merchant Nathan Simson shows that they also had strong links with Amsterdam,
Barbados, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Curacao, St Eustatius, St Thomas, and the Iberian empires as
well as London. Simson papers, TNA C /.

On effects of itineracy in managing opportunism in long-distance trade, Leonor Freire
Costa, Maria Manuela Rocha, and Tanya Araujo, ‘Social capital and economic performance:
trust and distrust in eighteenth-century gold shipments from Brazil’, European Review of
Economic History,  (), pp. –.

Simson papers, TNA C /; Robert Cohen, ‘Sampson and Jacob Mears, merchants’,
Jewish Historical Quarterly,  (), pp. –. The inscription on the tomb of Solomon Levy
of  Aug.  noted that Levy was born in Germany. Barnett and Wright, Tombstone inscriptions.

Jessica Roitman, ‘Us and them: inter-cultural trade and the Sephardim, –’
(Ph.D. thesis, Leiden, ).

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
Christians; and they hired Christian mariners. They also undertook business in
partnership with well-placed individuals who could offer political capital.
However, where trust was most needed, they relied on insiders as in using
Jewish supercargoes on the Spanish American coast. Good information about
the moral and business conduct of members of their own small, close-knit
island congregation, combined with knowledge of those overseas, to allow
early detection of bad behaviour and group discipline was enhanced by the
supervisory role accorded to Jewish leaders. Although early congregation
records have not survived, it is clear that, like other Sephardic communities,
the Jamaican Jews elected a governing board (Mahamad) which administered
the community’s affairs, appointed Rabbis, supervised religious and moral
order, dealt with internal disputes, and represented community interests to
the government. The leaders also oversaw the rating, assessing, and collection
of the extraordinary taxes imposed at various times ‘in the lump’ from the
s: a role which provided them with detailed financial information about
their co-religionists.
Early English Jamaica was notorious for low levels of business morality. In a
published memoir, Houston left a colourful picture of the ‘burlesque’ of
Jamaica’s early eighteenth-century business world and claimed that the islan-
ders ‘reckoned no disgrace, or loss of credit, to fail in, or fall from your word,
bill or bond’. He was scathing about the corruption of the island’s legal
system and the difficulties of getting redress for bad behaviour through the
courts, and his sentiments were echoed by the Jewish merchant Diego
Gonzalez, who complained that ‘it doe signifie nothing to go to law, for after
you get judgement and your money goes in the Provost Marshall’s hands you
are as bad as before’. However, although the Jews did make use of formal
contracts within the community, as seen in the Articles of Association
between Gabay and Narbona, and did also, on occasion, use the courts to sue
for debts, they were generally able to avoid formal institutions and turn to
internal mechanisms for settling disputes within their community.
Wills and deeds reveal that, at best, a damaged reputation reduced access to
group benefits such as apprenticeship, a good marriage, business collabora-
tions, inheritance, and social welfare. At worst, disgrace threatened partial,
or absolute, exclusion from the group, which was akin to economic and social


Memorial of the Jews enclosed with letter from Beeston to Lords of Trade,  May ,
TNA CO /, fo. ; response of the Council to the Petition of the Jews, , TNA CO
/, fo. ; JAJ, I, p. , II, pp. , .

Long, History, I, pp. –.

Houston, Memoirs, pp. –.

Abraham and Diego Gonzalez to Simson, , Simson papers, TNA C /.

Cohen, ‘Sampson and Jacob Mears’, p. . A sample of thirty Admiralty cases relating to
Jamaica between  and  includes four involving Jews but no cases of Jews suing Jews.
TNA HCA /–.

Fifteen Jewish wills provide an insight into family discipline. Island Record Office,
Spanish Town, Wills, Liber , .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

death. While the forging of a closed and separate community, with distinct
social practices, increased trust among insiders, it also defined the Jews as a
nation apart. Between  and , the Christian Hall brothers had transac-
tions with seven Jews, of whom four (including Moses Jesuran Cardosa) were
large repeat customers but, although they made thirty-three references to ‘a
Jew’ in their forty-seven letters, they never once identified these individuals,
even repeat customers, by name – names here have been extracted from
invoices and lists of debts. The Jews were seen ‘in the lump’ and, at best,
they were viewed with suspicion and, at worst, with envy and venom.
According to Houston, they were ‘the worst set of rogues that ever I knew…a
set of meer low-level thieves’. It was difficult for an expelled Jew to form a
new network or join the majority population. Outsider status not only pro-
moted community cohesion among the Jews but also gave the Jewish elders a
powerful disciplinary tool and, although the early congregation records have
not survived, there is evidence that excommunication was a credible threat
within the Sephardic diaspora. The strong capacity to detect and punish
opportunistic behaviour among their brethren gave the Jews a significant com-
petitive advantage where legal enforcement was weak, or entirely absent, as in
contraband trade. It has been argued that these economic advantages help
explain why a stigmatized group persisted in maintaining its separate identity.
If distinctiveness had had costs alone, and no benefits, it would be expected
that the signalling traits would have died out through a Darwinian mechanism.
The economic value of high-quality information networks and the capacity to
curb opportunism cannot be computed with precision. Nonetheless, business
records do demonstrate that these community assets allowed the Jews to
reduce risk and transactions costs in illicit trade and undercut their Christian
rivals. In the s, Francis Hall complained that the Jews supplied French
silks and stuffs at  per cent below the usual market price and he repeatedly
urged his correspondents to withdraw from these trades as they could not
compete. The Jews also charged lower commission rates: a sample of 
invoices from the period  to  shows that English merchants
charged, at least,  per cent commission, and their Jewish rivals undercut


Barak Richman, ‘How community institutions create economic advantage: Jewish
diamond merchants in New York’, Law and Social Inquiry,  (), pp. –.

The Halls traded with Cardoza, Gomez, Gonzalez, de Leon, Narbona, Nunez, and da
Silva Solis. Brailsford papers, TNA C /.

Houston, Memoirs, p. .

Council of Jamaica, , TNA CO /, fos. –.

Yosef Kaplan, ‘The place of the Herem in the Sefardic community of Hamburg during
the seventeenth century’, in Michael Seudemund-Halevy and Peter Koj, eds., Die Sefarden in
Hamburg: Zur geschichte einer meinheit (Hamburg, ); Daniel Swetschinski, Reluctant cosmopo-
litans: the Portuguese Jews of seventeenth-century Amsterdam (London, ).

Francis Hall to Thomas Brailsford,  Mar. /,  Jan. /, Brailsford papers,
TNA C /.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
 ILLICIT TRADE, TRUST, AND JEWS 
them by  per cent. This competitive edge allowed the Jews to gain Christian
customers which provoked the charge that the Jews did ‘eat us and our children
out of all our trade’ and raised the threat of retaliatory action.
Although the Jews had full property rights, they were excluded from voting in
Assembly elections, or holding office above constable, and so lacked a voice in
island government. Thus, the Jews were exposed to discriminatory measures
such as the imposition of a tax on the community ‘in the lump’ at regular inter-
vals from the s. Nonetheless, leading Jewish merchants were able to
limit the damage through a series of bargains with the political elites. They com-
bined with governors, African Company agents, naval captains, and South Sea
Company agents, in various ‘exclusive’ trading arrangements. In these, the
Christians gained the benefits of the Sephardim’s social capital, and the Jews
gained both the opportunity to limit competition though manipulating the
regulatory regime to their advantage, and also improved security. By giving
the Christian elite a stake in their business, the Sephardim raised the cost of
the type of retaliatory action which had so often destabilized Jewish life in the
past and gained political protection as seen in William Wood’s energetic
defence of their rights in the s.

V
In the last two decades, historians have highlighted the importance of the web
of illicit commercial transactions which connected competing national net-
works to create an integrated Atlantic economy but have paid little attention
to how co-operation worked across borders. Of necessity, smugglers acted
without the legal protections and state-backed enforcing institutions which
are often afforded a central role in narratives of modernization. In the case
of Jamaica, a hub of illicit trade, most merchants found it difficult to survive
in this high-risk environment but members of the Sephardic diaspora, a
traditional, communitarian group, with strong private-order institutions, had
competitive advantages which they exploited with vigour. Equipped with


Brailsford papers, TNA C /; Simson papers, TNA C /.

Beeston to Lords of Trade, TNA CO /, fo. ; petition to Sir Thomas Lynch, ,
TNA CO /, no. .

‘Act declaring what persons shall be qualified to sit in Assemblies’, , JAJ, II, p. .

Memo of Jews about taxes,  May , TNA CO /, fo. .

Samuel, ‘Sir William Davidson’; Lynch to Arlington,  Dec. , TNA /, fo. ;
Zahedieh, ‘Regulation, rent-seeking’. Lawes to Lords of Trade,  June , TNA CO /
, pt , no. . In the s, the Assembly claimed that the trade on the coast had been
engrossed by the men-of-war in association with the leading Jewish supercargoes. Isaac
Lamego had been concerned in about ten voyages with Captain Lawes and three or four
with Captain Dent. This had been to the detriment of smaller traders who had been excluded.
JAJ, II, pp. , –.

Wood put forward a petition in support of the Jews with ninety-two signatures of
which fifty were from Christians. William Wood to Lords of Trade,  Feb. , TNA CO
/, fo. .

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097
  NUALA ZAHEDIEH

appropriate language skills, and long-standing links to the Iberian empires, the
Sephardim did not scatter at random but rather chose to settle communities at
Jamaica and other strategic points in the web of illicit commerce which distrib-
uted Spanish American riches around the Atlantic and beyond. In Jamaica, they
did not rely on innate attributes of kinship, ethnicity, or religion. Rather, they
pursued strategies which restricted entry and also cultivated attributes which
ensured that group behaviour could be carefully monitored, and high levels
of social discipline maintained, with credible rewards and punishments which
were reinforced by their outsider status.
High levels of trustworthiness within the Jewish community provided a com-
petitive advantage which stimulated envy and retaliation but also allowed the
Sephardim to combine with the Christian elite to capture rent-seeking oppor-
tunities and obtain political protections. Far from falling away, and becoming
irrelevant, as modernization gained pace, the Sephardic diaspora survived
and flourished because it built on its historical and geographical legacy to con-
struct strong private-order institutions which continued to be necessary in large
swathes of the economy where neither impersonal corporations nor state-
enforcement mechanisms were able to manage risk. Furthermore, merchant
diasporas continue to play a key role in high-risk environments and remain
important in understanding the processes of globalization today.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Columbia University Libraries, on 13 Aug 2017 at 07:52:31, subject to the Cambridge
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000097